Carol Dweck, born in New York City in 1946, is an esteemed American psychologist, professor and award-winning author known for her transformative work on mindset psychology, motivation and success.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Yale University, she held positions at Columbia, Harvard and the University of Illinois before joining Stanford University’s faculty in 2004.
Now the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford, Dweck’s research intersects developmental, social and personality psychology, examining the self-conceptions guiding people’s behavior.
Her pioneering theories have had profound influences on multiple fields, including education, business, healthcare and parenting.
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Dweck’s impressive contributions to her field have garnered her numerous awards, such as the E. L. Thorndike Career Achievement Award in Educational Psychology, the Klingenstein Award for Leadership in Education and the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research.
I have handpicked some of the best quotes from Carol Dweck.
Best Carol Dweck Quotes
Teaching is a wonderful way to learn. ~ Carol Dweck.
Create an organization that prizes the development of ability – and watch the leaders emerge. ~ Carol Dweck.
It is not always people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. ~ Carol Dweck.
You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way. ~ Carol Dweck.
Wow, that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard. ~ Carol Dweck.
When Do You Feel Smart: When You’re Flawless or When You’re Learning? ~ Carol Dweck.
Becoming is better than being. ~ Carol Dweck.
I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could. ~ Carol Dweck.
They’d had no interest in proving themselves. They just did what they loved – with tremendous drive and enthusiasm – and it led where it led. ~ Carol Dweck.
The hallmark of successful people is that they are always stretching themselves to learn new things. ~ Carol S. Dweck.
We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. ~ Carol Dweck.
Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. ~ Carol Dweck.
When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive far greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation. ~ Carol S. Dweck.
Famous Carol Dweck Quotes
Failure is information-we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’ ~ Carol Dweck.
It’s for you to decide whether change is right for you right now. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But either way keep the growth mindset in your thoughts then when you bump up against obstacles you can turn to it, it will always be there for you showing you a path into the future. ~ Carol Dweck.
In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented. ~ Carol Dweck.
Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area, but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. ~ Carol S. Dweck.
Mistakes are so interesting. Here’s a wonderful mistake. Let’s see what we can learn from it. ~ Carol Dweck.
This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. ~ Carol Dweck.
Effort is one of those things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. ~ Carol Dweck.
Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. ~ Carol Dweck.
We don’t care about who you are, what you’re interested in, and what you can become. We don’t care about learning. We will love and respect you only if you go to Harvard. ~ Carol Dweck.
The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn. ~ Carol Dweck.
NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them. ~ Carol Dweck.
This knowledge that you might have to really reorganize and redefine yourself and build new skills is really important. ~ Carol Dweck.
Top Carol Dweck Quotes
Choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates. ~ Carol Dweck.
This is hard. This is fun. ~ Carol Dweck.
You have to work hardest for the things you love most. ~ Carol Dweck.
When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success. ~ Carol Dweck.
When you’re lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, ‘I really explored myself.’ This sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died. If you only go through life doing stuff that’s easy, shame on you. ~ Carol Dweck.
What did you learn today? What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today? ~ Carol Dweck.
More and more research is suggesting that, far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that changes over the lifespan and is shaped by experience. ~ Carol Dweck.
Inspiring Carol Dweck Quotes
I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results. ~ Carol Dweck.
Most experts and great leaders agree that leaders are made, not born, and that they are made through their own drive for learning and self-improvement. ~ Carol S. Dweck.
You can always substantially change how intelligent you are. ~ Carol Dweck.
What did you try hard at today? ~ Carol Dweck.
A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive. ~ Carol Dweck.
No matter what your current ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment. ~ Carol Dweck.
The best thing parents can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. ~ Carol Dweck.
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? ~ Carol Dweck.
Don’t judge. Teach. It’s a learning process. ~ Carol Dweck.
The great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent, and they are fascinated with the process of learning. ~ Carol Dweck.
Popular Carol Dweck Quotes
The whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have them encourage yours. ~ Carol Dweck.
The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. ~ Carol Dweck.
What eventually set him apart was his mindset and drive. He never stopped being the curious, tinkering boy looking for new challenges. ~ Carol Dweck.
Skills and achievement come through commitment and effort. ~ Carol Dweck.
For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. ~ Carol Dweck.
An assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone’s ability, let alone their potential to succeed in the future. ~ Carol Dweck.
People in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. The bigger the challenge, the more they stretch. And nowhere can it be seen more clearly than in the world of sports. You can just watch people stretch and grow. ~ Carol Dweck.
Your horse is only as fast as your brain. Every time you learn something, your horse will move ahead. ~ Carol Dweck.
Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? ~ Carol Dweck.
Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up. ~ Carol Dweck.
For them it’s not about immediate perfection. It’s about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress. ~ Carol Dweck.
Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going. ~ Carol Dweck.
Wise Carol Dweck Quotes
True self-confidence is the courage to be open – to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. ~ Carol Dweck.
If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That. ~ Carol Dweck.
People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower. ~ Carol Dweck.
Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning. ~ Carol Dweck.
What can I learn from this? What will I do next time I’m in this situation? ~ Carol Dweck.
On the whole, people with a fixed mindset prefer effortless success, since that’s the best way to prove their talent. ~ Carol Dweck.
People with a fixed mindset were only interested when the feedback reflected on their ability. Their brain waves showed them paying close attention when they were told whether their answers were right or wrong. ~ Carol Dweck.
Vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan. ~ Carol Dweck.
In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow. ~ Carol Dweck.
So these were the 68 top Carol Dweck quotes on growth mindset, success and psychology.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Sundar Pichai quotes and Ken Robinson quotes.
